Lone Wolves

by Chesbro, George C. ;

  Now there was a prolonged silence, which was finally broken by Sharon. “The Russians, of course, knew about Lazarus People, and they’d been conducting their own experiments, probably for years. Because of the well-known phenomenon of Lazarus People who are strangers instinctively recognizing others like themselves, the Russians theorized that some kind of crude telepathy was taking place, and that this telepathic power was greatest in the few moments before death—as certain people approach the Lazarus Gate. One of their many zany notions was to take two people in different parts of the world, stop their hearts, use drugs to get Lazarus Spikes on the subjects’ EKGs, have them exchange secrets at the Lazarus Gate, then revive them and recover the information. Voilâ. An intelligence-gathering system that is instantaneous, and can’t be penetrated. This seems to be your Holy Grail as well. Forget it. As Mr. Kendry has explained, you can’t duplicate the experience in a lab and have the test subject or subjects survive. The KGB probably tried to do it many times, and kept losing people. That’s why they penetrated Jonathan Pilgrim’s operation when they found out I was doing similar research. But I was working with people who were already dying and who fit a profile predicting they might be candidates for experiencing the Lazarus Gate. We never tried the experiment you’re contemplating, because we’d already done computer simulations telling us it couldn’t be done successfully.”

  “That doesn’t jibe with what’s in the KGB reports,” the white-haired woman said, her tone openly skeptical. “Those records indicate you were sent there, and you’ve obviously survived.”

  Sharon shook her head impatiently. “Those files are inaccurate. It’s true they wanted to use me as a guinea pig, and they got as far as stopping my heart. But then Veil stopped them before they could try to induce a Lazarus Spike, and he revived me.”

  “But you died and came back,” the woman insisted. “You’re a Lazarus Person.”

  “No. I just died and was revived before the KGB could juice me up. I never shared the experience. I don’t remember a damn thing.”

  “Let’s go,” Veil said to Sharon, taking her arm and leading her across the basement. He paused at the door, turned back toward the others. “Now you know it all,” he continued. “You’re wasting your time. Don’t waste mine, or Dr. Solow’s, again. You tell your Company bosses I will not tolerate anyone from your outfit invading our privacy again. Got it?”

  Denny Whalen half raised his hand, said in a small voice, “Uh, Mr. Kendry?”

  “What part of that statement didn’t you understand, Denny?”

  “May I ask you just one more question?”

  “Not about the missing panel.”

  “It’s not about the mural, sir. It’s about you.”

  Veil shrugged resignedly. “Let’s hear the question.

  “We learned about your being a CIA operative during the Vietnam War from the KGB files. There’s no mention of you in our own files, not anywhere. The only thing we could find was a note on your army record that you’d been dishonorably discharged on a Section Eight; just about everything else had been deleted. The KGB reports say that your CIA code name was Archangel. Why did the Company expunge your file?”

  Veil smiled thinly, exchanged glances with Sharon, then replied, “For your own good, Denny, I’m not going to tell you. Don’t pursue it; don’t even think about it. You ask that question of the wrong person at Langley, and you’re going to end up dead. Good night.”

  Veil dreams.

  He senses something is wrong, and he flies to where he has not been in many years, the Lazarus Gate. He is pure blue flight, surrounded by a brilliant electric blue. He is the blue, and when he looks at his hands he can see through them. There are no fixed reference points, no sounds, only the sensation that he is traveling at great speed through no time and no space to a place that for others is death.

  As he continues to stare at his right hand a pinpoint of white light suddenly appears in the blue beyond the palm. He puts his hand to his eyes and the light flashes through him, arcing down his spinal cord. He explodes into pieces and is reassembled, floating weightless in a gray void before a shadowy figure silhouetted against a shimmering white radiance that he knows is the Lazarus Gate. The man in green, naked now like everyone who comes here, is just completing his passage through the gate, disappearing from sight as a great chime sounds, and Veil can feel the booming echo in his head, heart, stomach, and groin.

  Denny Whalen, his eyes bulging with wonder and a huge grin on his face, is floating on his back, arms and legs spread out to his sides, down the gray corridor toward the beckoning figure. Veil speeds down the corridor, past the scientist, then stops in front of him, blocking the way.

  Denny sees him and giggles hysterically, the sound of his laughter emerging from his mouth as a series of tiny bell sounds that cascade like rain all around them. “HEY, KENDRY! YOU DIDN’T TELL US WHAT IT FELT LIKE! WHAT A TRIP! ARE YOU REALLY HERE, OR IS THIS JUST A DREAM?!”

  “Precisely,” Veil replies evenly.

  “WHICH IS IT?!”

  “This is a dream you’re not going to wake up from unless you do exactly as I say.”

  “WHO WANTS TO WAKE UP?”

  “You don’t have to shout. As you can see, there’s a great sound system here.”

  “I’M SO HAPPY!”

  “Denny, you’re really a glutton for punishment. You and your buddy who just went brain dead simply couldn’t resist the temptation to try for the Lazarus Gate, could you?”

  “BUDGET CUTBACKS!” Denny shouts, and again giggles hysterically. “EVERYBODY HAS TO PULL THEIR WEIGHT OR GET FIRED! I FIGURED THIS WAS A WAY TO GET AHEAD! WE COULDNT JUST TAKE YOUR WORD FOR IT THAT THERE WAS NOTHING HERE! THE STAKES WERE TOO HIGH!”

  “Stop shouting, Denny. Calm down.”

  Denny, the fields of freckles on his face glowing purple, tries to somersault up and over Veil, but Veil blocks his way. “If you are really here, then it’s true,” Denny says, his voice dropping to a whisper. “We’re communicating telepathically. You and Dr. Solow lied.”

  “So sue us.”

  “Absolute, stone telepathy, complete with bells and whistles, a great light show, and all in living color.”

  “Almost living, Denny. You seem to keep forgetting that little problem. What you are is not quite biologically dead, but you’re working on it.”

  “This is what’s on the missing panel in the mural, isn’t it? You.”

  “No. There is no missing panel, Denny. The mural is complete as it is. There’s nothing there at the heart of that figure. It’s biological death. There is no emptier space.”

  “Who is he?”

  “There’s nobody there, Denny. It’s a shadow. Superstition. Humans are apparently hard-wired for it. Superstition may have been a very useful survival skill for cave people in the Stone Age.”

  “How do you know there’s nothing there?”

  “Because I’ve been there, Denny. I’ve passed through the heart of that shadow many times.”

  “You brought Dr. Solow back from beyond there, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But it took years, and a very special lifeline called love. Sharon is a unique survivor, because I’m apparently unique—no other vivid dreamer that I know of has learned to control dreaming as I do, or traveled here. In addition, to find others you need a personal connection. That’s why you don’t see anybody else around.”

  Denny giggles again, but his laughter is becoming less hysterical. “You raise the dead.”

  “I don’t make a habit of it, and I’m certainly not available for work as a kind of astral answering machine for the CIA or anyone else. You didn’t listen before when I warned you, Denny, but you’d better listen now. Apparently every person experiences some flow of endorphins just before the end; it’s life’s last gift to us. It’s why you feel so good, and why Lazarus People no longer fear death. It also changes the way they view things. Even if you could send intelligence operatives here to exchange messages without killing them,
not much of the information they gave back to you would be very useful. Lazarus People make lousy spies, because spying doesn’t interest them any longer. Harming people doesn’t interest them, nor does lying and secrecy—unless it’s to protect life. But that issue’s moot. What’s happened, as I warned, is that the drug cocktail they gave you to induce the Lazarus Spike after they stopped your heart has resulted in a multifold increase in endorphins; right now your brain is flooded with feel-good juice. You don’t want the feeling to end; you can’t end it on your own, any more than you can suddenly stop an orgasm. Unless you do as I say, your brain will die before it can reabsorb the endorphins. Right now your people are no doubt frantically trying to restart your heart and wondering why they can’t. It’s because you don’t want the orgasm to end. You could say I’m here to squeeze your dork until the effect begins to wear off.”

  “Wooaaaa.”

  “Sorry. I know it’s a tacky analogy, but it’s the most accurate I can think of.”

  “But you’re absolutely right. I don’t want to go back. There’s nothing back there that interests me any longer.”

  “See the problem? Count sheep, Denny.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Denny giggles again. “That’s very funny.”

  “Count sheep—big, fat, ugly sheep. You have to try to distract yourself from the ecstasy long enough for your brain and other organs to reabsorb the drugs. There can’t be much time left, because we’re drifting closer to the Lazarus Gate. I know we’re close, because I can feel the pressure of the light on my back. I won’t go through there with you, because you’ll be beyond my help. Now close your eyes and count sheep. I’m going to come closer. If you can feel my presence entering yours, wrap your arms and legs around me and hold tight.”

  “I’m not sure we know each other that well.”

  “This is about life, Denny. Shared humanity. If you can become one with me, I may be able to take you back. Do it. Quickly.”

  Denny Whalen continues to grin inanely, but he closes his eyes, and his lips move as he begins to count. Veil moves even closer, entering the mist that is the other man’s body. When he feels Denny’s presence, he wills himself into flight back down the corridor, slowly at first and then accelerating. Denny, still counting, comes with him. When they reach the field of electric blue, Veil rolls away from the other man and returns to his own darkness.

  Denny Whalen stood outside on the sidewalk beneath the streetlight where the first Lazarus Person had been, looking up at his window. Veil did not have to check the streets surrounding the building to know the man had come alone. He selected a bottle of wine, then took two glasses from a cabinet and went downstairs. “Welcome back,” he said, walking over to the red-haired man and handing him a glass. “I’d invite you up, but I’ve been working, and I don’t like people to see my works-in-progress.”

  Denny held out his glass as Veil poured wine for both of them. “It really happened, then, didn’t it?” he asked quietly.

  “I suppose that depends on one’s definition of reality. Are you still interested in sending secret messages from submarines?”

  “I came to thank you.”

  Veil shrugged. “No need. I’m glad you made it back.”

  “You brought me back. They were just about ready to give up trying to revive me. Another couple of seconds and I would have been dead.”

  “You were dead.”

  “I’d have been permanently dead.”

  “Indeed.”

  They sat down together on the curb, shoulder to shoulder, and sipped their wine in silence. Finally Denny said, “I lied to them. I told them I didn’t remember everything. I told them it didn’t work.”

  “That part isn’t a lie. It doesn’t work.”

  “God, dying is so private.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I know so much about you now, Veil.”

  “No, you don’t, Denny. You just feel very close to me. There’s a difference. This is what you’ll feel with every other Lazarus Person you meet for the rest of your life.”

  “No. I know you. I know the goodness in you. And I know that somehow the Company hurt you terribly.”

  “They didn’t hurt me at all. I owe everything I am and have to the Company.”

  “They hurt you.”

  “You’re getting maudlin on me, Denny. Now drop it. That’s as private to me as dying.”

  Denny sighed, nodded. “With the corpse of one field operative and a researcher who says he experienced nothing to explain, I don’t think they’ll be trying that experiment again.”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  “I’m quitting the agency.”

  “Why?” Veil asked in a mild tone.

  “I thought you’d understand.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You were right about how returning from the Lazarus Gate changes people. Now so much of what the Company does seems just … silly. I want to do something else with my life. I want to do what you do.”

  “Paint?”

  “No. Something that’s deeply satisfying to me personally. Maybe helping people.”

  “While you’re trying to figure out what to do with the rest of your life, consider the possibility that you could help people by staying right where you are now. There are lots of bad guys in the world who need spying on, Denny. Leave them to their own devices, unchecked, and they’ll eat innocent people alive.”

  “I assumed you hated the Company.”

  “I hate the bad guys in the Company—and there’s a whole passel of them. They’re the ones who tried to hurt me. I don’t object to the CIA’s mission—just the way they go about it. Now, I happen to think having a Lazarus Person in there is a hoot. I also think it’s a great idea. You should work hard for promotion, maybe devote your life to becoming Director. A Lazarus Person would make the perfect mole, a kind of ultimate weapon against the bad guys.”

  “I won’t be a weapon for anybody, Veil.”

  “Exactly my point, Denny.” Veil smiled as he raised his glass. “Here’s to a long and illustrious career in the CIA, Denny. Cheers.”

  UNMARKED GRAVES

  Veil dreams.

  Vivid dreaming is his gift and affliction, the lash of memory and a guide to justice, a mystery and sometimes the key to mystery, prod to violence and maker of peace, an invitation to madness and the fountainhead of his power as an artist.

  As the A train pulled into the West Fourth Street station, Veil Kendry heard the wail of a human over the scream of machinery, and he turned to his left to see a knot of people gathering around someone lying in their midst on the subway platform. He pushed through a wall of startled and curious commuters and came upon a frail young Chinese woman giving birth.

  “Get back and give her room to breathe!” he said sharply, raising and loosening her dress as he knelt beside her in a pool of her burst water. It turned out to be a needless request, for the harried New Yorkers were already surging around them in a rush to get on the train. He shouted to no one in particular, “Tell the motorman to call the paramedics!” The train pulled out of the station, and the few people who had gotten off glanced nervously at the tableau of a man and woman, blood and water on the concrete, and walked quickly away. In a few moments they were alone on the platform. Veil positioned himself between the woman’s legs and gently cradled the tiny, bloody head that was emerging from the birth canal. Between gasps and cries the woman spoke to him rapidly in what Veil recognized as Chinese. He spoke, or at least understood, a number of Asian languages, but not Chinese, and so he spoke to her softly and soothingly in English. When the baby emerged Veil wiped away the placenta, bit through the umbilical cord and knotted it, then gently laid the newborn infant on the mother’s heaving chest. “Here you are, Mama,” he said quietly, caressing her cheek. “Calm down, now. It’s all right. People will be here soon to take care of you.”

  The woman’s reaction startled him. Still speaking rapidly and obviousl
y distressed, she picked up her baby and held it out to him, urgently and repeatedly gesturing for him to take it. “I don’t want your baby, Mama,” he said, shaking his head as he pressed the infant back down on her chest, noticing as he did so the rope burns on her wrists. “She’s yours. Take it easy. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  There was a clattering sound behind him, and Veil looked over his shoulder as two paramedics who had just come down the stairway, a Sikh and a Hispanic, unfolded the collapsible stretcher they carried and hurried up the platform, followed close behind by a black patrolman who was speaking into a crackling walkie-talkie.

  “Not too trashy, pal,” the Sikh said, nodding his approval as he gazed down at the woman and her baby. “You a doctor?”

  Veil started to rise, but the woman would not release her tight grip on his wrist, and so he eased himself back down beside her. “An observer,” he replied. “I’ve seen a few babies delivered.”

  “You work in a hospital?”

  “I used to work in a jungle.”

  The Hispanic grunted as he handed Veil a towel to wipe the blood from his hands. “This is the seventy-fifth subway delivery this year. That puts us a little bit ahead of schedule. The birth rate down here is nice and steady. We’ll take care of her now.

  The woman looked around, gasped, and then renewed her urgent efforts to hand Veil her baby. Veil turned in the direction the woman had looked and saw that three scowling Chinese youths, one an albino, had suddenly appeared on the platform and were standing just behind the paramedics. They were identically dressed in jeans, black sneakers, and black satin jackets embroidered with red dragons. The policeman cursed under his breath.